Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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10.7.08

A graduate of Louisiana State University – Baton Rouge has written an interesting editorial that, if nothing else, provides a perfect demonstration of the parochialism that has held back higher education in Louisiana for so long.The column concerns recent Gov. Bobby Jindal appointments to the LSU Board of Supervisors, the body that controls the Louisiana State University system comprising of LSUBR, the University of New Orleans, LSU Shreveport (my employer, who has nothing to do with this posting), LSU Alexandria, LSU Eunice, the law school, the agricultural school, two medical schools (New Orleans and Shreveport), the Health Care Services Division (the other “charity” hospitals), and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. It makes two points, that recent Jindal appointments may have served to tilt power in the system more to him and away from system President John Lombardi, and that given one appointee is a University of Louisiana – Monroe graduate, in the words of the writer, “And there exist[sic] an opinion or two among LSU alumnus[sic] – myself included – who feel every member of the LSU Board of Supervisors should have graduated from LSU or the university's law school or its medical school.”Concerning speculation about the impact of the appointments relevant to Lombardi, it’s true that Lombardi didn’t quite understand on which side the bread was buttered early in his tenure as he made public statements at odds with Jindal initiatives. Jindal modified them somewhat but forged ahead successfully anyway and Lombardi has grown much quieter since. The biggest battle, however, looms ahead – getting the LSU system out of the hospital business with the loss of resources, power, and prestige that comes with that in order to institute a more efficient and effective money-follows-the-person system of indigent health care. Here, it bears understanding that Lombardi merely is hired at the pleasure of the Board and will do what it wants, so if Jindal is putting people on the Board amenable to getting the state’s flagship educational system out of managing health care, Lombardi will bend in that direction.

9.7.08

When analyzing contests for the U.S. House of Representatives, casual observers easily can get confused by two things. One is that few people have a chance to win these contests without sufficient resources, and the second is it matters from where these resources come relative to other candidates. An announced 1st District candidate provides an object lesson concerning these points as they first day of qualification for federal elections commences.

One Jim Harlan announced that he is running as a Democrat (despite only until recently being registered as no party) for this spot against new incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Scalise. Further, Harlan reports $554,378 as of the end of June in his campaign account, while Scalise has less than a quarter of that in his. On the surface, this might indicate that Scalise has a tough reelection campaign ahead.

Go beneath and the reality is different. The modern rule of thumb is that, in order to be a competitive rather than novelty candidate, one must raise at least $500,000 for this kind of race. Harlan has achieved this and thus can compete and theoretically could win.

But having a realistic chance of winning is another matter, and the clearest indicator of the chances of success is how dispersed are contributions. That is, the more contributors a candidate has, the greater his chances are of winning, because contributing is the strongest sign of desire in a voter to see a candidate win and at least 95 percent of contributors to someone will end up voting for that candidate.

Checking the campaign finance reports shows Harlan largely has self-financed his effort. That half a million-plus may get him to 40 percent of the vote in a general election against Scalise, but he will need a lot more in the way of personal shows of support through others contributing to his campaign in order to get that last 10 percent-plus of the vote.

As an incumbent with a long history of support, Scalise will have enough money to win this race even if he gets outspent. The facet about campaign politics that creates the most misperception, often manifested in cries about regulating money raised and spent in campaigns, is the belief that money attracts votes and therefore causes wins. To think this reverses completely the way it actually works: money does not create quality in a candidate, but instead the quality of the candidate attracts money. Note that the quality candidate may not even have to spend a good portion of this money in order to win because he’ll win on the basis of his quality, not from votes getting “bought” by campaign spending.

Scalise is a high-quality candidate who in his short time has demonstrated high popularity in his conservative district and is receiving national attention. Harlan could spend much more of his own money and still, barring some weird, unforeseen event, have little chance of winning. Unless he starts receiving a lot more in donations from others, showing a critical mass of people think he is quality enough to have a chance against Scalise, he will end up just an annoyance to Scalise as the latter cruises to reelection.

8.7.08

Great out of the gate but stumbling more recently, is Gov. Bobby Jindal getting back on track to enhance his ability to lead Louisiana in the nearer term, and perhaps to take aim at loftier political ambitions?

After two successful special sessions called at his behest, during the regular session Jindal encountered difficulty with two items in particular due to apparent inattentiveness. First, he failed to get behind a needed income tax cut – in fact resisting it at first – until the very end, and since has tried clumsily to take credit for it. Second, he allowed legislators to vote themselves a hefty pay raise that put him in the awkward position of reneging on a promise to them, not to veto it, in order to fulfill a promise to voters to oppose a massive increase, taking on political damage needlessly and perhaps making more difficult getting his future agenda adopted.

These actions have reinforced some nationalpredictions for Jindal to go far and succeed within conservative and Republican ranks. But success for Jindal in Louisiana, a prerequisite for any national political aspirations, will depend upon his consideration of the issues left over from this year’s sessions, addressed, manufactured, and looming.

First, Jindal must realize that the Legislature, even as he may find its independence desirable in theory, if in practice is allowed to govern without his reformist supervision that it will not veer in the policy direction he supports and hoped would happen. By now the evidence seems clear (such as by ethics backtracking and the temerity of the raise) that reformist impulses within the Legislature are insufficient to actually produce positive change without somewhat heavy-handed involvement on his part. Jindal may have thought the influx of new legislators, many of whom ran on similar reform ideas as he, would prevent this from happening, but obviously it did not. However, enough of the new with some of the old have not fallen for the siren song of power so that he can make common cause with them to help overcome distrust engendered from the pay raise handling fiasco to pass his programs.

Second, Jindal must realize his credentials for smaller government have been damaged by his late-boarding-yet-credit-taking for the tax cut. The only way to restore them to health is by his finding another such cut to enact before the end of his term, perhaps targeting this time corporate rates (more broadly than his recent pronouncement of merely looking at the usefulness of tax credits). Another thing he could do to enhance this is be even more ruthless with line item vetoes concerning the state’s appropriation bill than he was with the vetoes within the aforementioned supplemental bill.

Third, Jindal must tackle – as he has given reason to believe in recent statements – the issue area that promises the most to gain from efficiency, restructuring health care. As state revenues are predicted to slack off, hundreds of millions of dollars of spending reductions without lowering the amount or quality of service can be achieved simply by moving the state from its absurd over-reliance on institutional-based care towards money following the person meaning more community- and individual-based solutions.

His first four months in office were stellar, the next two troubled, but in his seventh month Jindal seems to be regaining his footing and following these policy paths will ensure that momentum will continue for the next year.

7.7.08

We’re safe again: the Louisiana Legislature has gone out of regular session for another year. But not before leaving us with some moments for pondering concerning actions of northwest Louisiana legislators (House districts 1 through 9, and Senate districts 36 through 39). So here it goes, for them the good, bad and the ugly of the 2008 session:THE GOOD: In contrast to last year when northwest legislators produced not much of positive consequence, one of the most monumental pieces of legislation of the entire session came from state Sen. B.L. “Buddy” Shaw in the form of SB 87 which will reduce many taxpayers’ individual income taxes by as much as $500 to $1,000 a year beginning in 2009. It wasn’t easy as a lot of political intrigue surrounded the issue.As it was, only a handful of legislators truly supported the idea behind the bill and Gov. Bobby Jindal initially opposed it. But it gained momentum when a number of legislators hostile to tax cuts seized upon and helped pass an amendment that would wipe out all individual income taxes as a poison pill to force Jindal to veto the bill given it would too quickly wrench too much revenue from state government, in order to embarrass him. Shaw, however, stuck to his guns, with help got Jindal to come on board the original concept, and got it through only delaying its implementation.

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